Regulations on pesticides have failed to prevent poisoning of almost all habitats, international team of scientists concludes
The world’s most widely used insecticides have contaminated the environment across the planet so pervasively that global food production is at risk, according to a comprehensive scientific assessment of the chemicals’ impacts.
The researchers compare their impact with that reported in Silent Spring, the landmark 1962 book by Rachel Carson that revealed the decimation of birds and insects by the blanket use of DDT and other pesticides and led to the modern environmental movement.
The belief that the raw mechanics of Capitalism, uninformed by any moral penumbra of ethics, religion, or philosophy, has alone caused the great material increase of the West, is of itself suspect. Indeed, the Protestant Work Ethic, the idea of fair play, the conception of noblesse oblige, respect for contracts and law, the forbearance of pleasure for industriousness, thrift, moderation, Christian charity, and a host of other ideals and virtues, have invariably tinctured capitalism’s character for better or worse.
Here is what I think is a correct assessment of the new global aristocracy that owns a growing percentage of the world's wealth, and wants more. We think of peasants as agricultural workers. But that is the past. In the present day it is increasingly ordinary workers — both blue and white collar. The wealth differential now is even greater than it was in the 14th century. Click through to see the very useful graphs.
David Shayler is a former intelligence officer with MI5, the UK's domestic security service. In 1997, he blew the whistle on MI6 funding Al Qaeda to assassinate Colonel Qadhafi of Libya. He will be writing on intelligence and security issues, and Common Law as the solution to the world‘s problems.
Earlier this month, the prestigious US magazine Life became the latest mainstream publication to attack ‘conspiracy theorists'. It cited the usual list of concerns – Agenda 21; chemtrails; weather manipulation; Obama's birth certificate – dismissing conspiracy theorists as gun-totin' right wing Christian extremists.
Hearteningly, the comments in response to the article proved that actually the thinking man in the street has seen through these kind of glib assertions on the part of journalists well-rewarded by the mainstream for their ignorance and inhumanity.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “India is to be found not in its few cities, but in its 700,000 villages.” Though that may at one time have been true, it is no longer the case. With about 30 country dwellers moving lock, stock and barrel every minute from Indian villages to become city dwellers, not many villages will be left in India by end of this century.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Towards the end of the last decade, our planet achieved two remarkable feats. First, our human population crossed the seven billion mark and for the first time in history, 50 percent of the world’s population was living in urban areas. This is expected to accelerate to 60 percent before 2025, globally; with the Western, developed world reaching an 80 percent urbanization level during this time frame. Urbanization has become so important that it has elevated some cities, like Brussels, Seoul, Bogota, and many more, to be even more important than the countries themselves contributing to over 40 percent of the country’s GDP. Interestingly, the UK has already demonstrated its efforts in focusing on this Mega Trend of urbanization and city as growth hubs with the creation of a new ministry role called the “minister for cities.” This person is tasked with unlocking the economic potential of cities, thus giving them more empowerment and freedom to do so.
Ukraine, not Iraq, May Start a Very Short World War: Roberts
“Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian strategic nuclear forces are in run down and unprepared condition and are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based on out-of-date information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites.
Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of Washington’s first strike and degree of protection provided by Washington’s ABM shield against retaliation, the article I posted by Steven Starr, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons,” makes clear that nuclear war has no winners. Everyone dies.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the so-called Deep State lately. What to make of this shadowy monster? Some observers link it to the paranoid fantasy called the New World Order, a staple of political talk radio (and a hobgoblin I don’t believe in). In popular movies such as the Jason Bourne epics and Mission Impossible, the Deep State launches hyper-complex schemes that work flawlessly and never fail. That is exactly why they have such high entertainment appeal. Viewers are thrilled by the precision, by the conceit of seeming infallibility. The Deep State definitely exists; it just doesn’t work the way it is depicted in the movies.
I like to say that I’m allergic to conspiracy theories because human beings are generally too inept to carry out schemes at the grand scale, as well as being poor secret-keepers. Insider knowledge is almost always swapped around, even in secretive organizations, often recklessly so, because doling it out confers status, tactical advantage, and sometimes money for the doler-outer. But the Deep State isn’t a secret. It operates in plain sight.
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Who Is Watching The Watchmen?
The affair raises very troubling questions, chiefly: has this vast “security” apparatus become by stealth a fourth branch of the United States Government? Does it think itself to be more equal than the other branches? Does its existence undermine the rule of law in this nation? And what do we ordinary citizens of this republic do about it? (Assuming we are still a republic.)
